Analysis and comment from Memphis, Tennessee, on media, politics, culture, science, my life and anything else that catches my eye.

Monday, August 19, 2002

The Pattern

Memphis has been something of a nexus of weird in the past six months. First, a microbiologist dies a very strange death, leaving an unsatisfactory explanation of his death. Then it turns out that viral microbiologists all over the world are dying odd, and sometimes unexplainable, deaths. Given the media play for the likelihood of an another anthrax, or even a smallpox, attack, it has sent conspiracists around the country into heavy theorizing. Just root around the Jeff Rense website and see. Warning--wear your aluminum cap and don't look into the neuralyzer.

Then, Memphis City medical examiner O.C. Smith is found wrapped in barbed wire with a crude bomb strapped to his chest. Next, there's the story of William Tanner and his bomber!

Unfortunately, all three cases are being handled by different entities. The Tanner case is with local police and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The Wiley death was handled by the FBI and is now closed. But the Smith story, which is still open, is a matter for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms!

I can only hope that all these folks are talking to each other. With the other things that have been reported around the state--terrorists scouting locations, the Manchester bus attack last year, our "here, have one" driver's license policy that has attracted terrorist notice--it would be awful, in the most literal sense, if they weren't and something fell through the cracks.